Chewin’ the Fat – First of the New Year

Happy New Year/late February everyone! I hope everyone had a good time on holiday, I certainly did. Unfortunately, after a hiatus lasting a couple of weeks, I am back at work getting rammed by busy season. Despite having less time to write articles for now I do feel that the one positive aspect of this is that I actually have some stuff to talk about in this article! It may help that I’m not using all of my spare time in some vain attempt to get a perfect playthrough of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (which I did – it just took me a long time).

Due to visiting friends and family I had no play time over the Christmas period. This is one of those unfortunate moments where life just decides to get in the way. Despite this I did have a tournament on 26/1/13. A 50pts Steamroller 2013 event in which I was going to follow the Play It Painted ethos! I really enjoyed the format and think SR2013 is an absolutely fantastic evolution of the steamroller packet. The biggest issue I am going to have this year will definitely be this whole painting thing as I have a backlog of models to paint up! I managed to take my Circle to this event with Krueger2 being the main list I settled on. I managed to get all of that painted in time so, luckily, it seems to be working so far!

My Krueger2 list has been discussed in depth in one of my previous articles so I’ll just post the list up here for reference. If you would like a look into how it is designed to work take a look at Chewin’ the Fat 8.

Krueger the Stormlord +5

– Gorax 4

– Warpwolf Stalker 10

– Ghetorix 11

– Druid Wilder 2

Dahlia Hakyr & Skarath 9

6 Druids of Orboros 7

– Druid Overseer 2

Shifting Stones 2

– Stone Keeper 1

Shifting Stones 2

Blackclad Wayfarer 2

Blackclad Wayfarer 2

Gallows Grove 1

Whilst Play it Painted severely limits my options it did massively simplify my 2nd list for this tournament. As stated in my previous article I like casters that can manipulate Strength or Armour in some way as my second list. Despite wanting to try Mohsar and Cassius it turns out that I didn’t have either of them painted. My Baldur1 isn’t painted either which left only 1 available Circle warlock. Kaya2 is coming out of the box as a second list!

The advantage of taking Kaya2 here is that her list is almost entirely painted. I intend to experiment with Bloodtrackers with Nuala with her because, from the limited play experience I have already had with her, I discovered she really wanted for an infantry screen. They benefit from being Stealthed in addition to the rest of her battlegroup so they don’t become a target for all of the shooting in the enemy army and the reform granted by Nuala allows them to clear charge lanes for all of the big beasties in her force:

Kaya the Moonhunter +3

– Laris –

– Warpwolf Stalker 10

– Warpwolf Stalker 10

– Pureblood Warpwolf 9

– Druid Wilder 2

10 Bloodtrackers 8

– Nuala the Huntress 2

Shifting Stones 2

– Stone Keeper 1

Shifting Stones 2

Gatormen Witch Doctor 3

Blackclad Wayfarer 2

Blackclad Wayfarer 2

There are several things I like about this list and one thing that I don’t. First, the things I like. The Pureblood combined with 2 Blackclads and the full Bloodtrackers has some serious infantry clearing potential, freeing up the Stalkers for dealing with heavier targets. The Pureblood is a fantastic reserve heavy with Kaya due to Forced Evo pushing its offensive levels to that of a normal to good heavy. A combination of Dog Pile and Hunters Mark means I don’t have to rely on stones to get my beasts across the board and can, instead, get some nice charge angles. I’m looking forward to testing the Witch Doc Croc with the Bloodtrackers as well. Both times I’ve put Bloodtrackers on the board before they failed a terror check which is one of the most demoralising things to experience so I’m taking that out of the equation.

My only issue with this list, and it is a big one, is that I would like access to a Gorax for Primal. I do think that the downsides to Primal are perhaps more of an issue with Kaya2 than with most as her feat brings those crazy beasts back next to all of her own stuff which could be very bad. Additionally, all of the big scary colossals and gargantuans that are floating around tend to be scary because of armour buffs so Wraithbane is usually just as useful, if not more so, than Primal when it comes to taking them out. The only real exception to this is the Mountain King but thats just terrible right… In all fairness this list shouldn’t have many issues against a Mountain King anyway with the ability to pick off a lot of the support staff without retaliation. On a side note I feel that this particular list is one that would benefit greatly from the new Specialist rules. I really hope that these rules become more widespread and generally accepted as they offer a lot of variety and allow for more interesting games without the fear of getting destroyed in certain matchups. In this list I would take a Gorax, Wold Watcher and a War Wolf as my Specialists. This would allow me to cover certain games that I feel I need access to Primal without compromising the rest of the list.

So, a very quick rundown of the tournament. There were 3 rounds overall with 12 players in attendance. In Round 1 I played against Alistair Grant and his Khador. The matchup was Krueger2 against Butcher1 with Widowmakers, Kayazy and 4 heavy jacks of various forms. From the beginning of the match I wasn’t entirely sure my list was going to be able to out attrition so I started to look for assassinations from the very beginning. By Turn 2 things were starting to skirmish in the middle of the battle around the objective zones and I saw my chance. I Telekinesised a shifting stone forward 2”, Primaled Ghetorix and double ported him into melee with Butcher. The only model to die in the game was Butcher and I prepared for Round 2.

In Round 2 I played Becky Barton and her Baldur2 list. Due to the way Baldur2 plays (no pushing and pulling and lots of armour) I decided to throw out Kaya2 as an opponent. The turning point of this game was when I managed to throw out Hunters Mark and Dogpile onto Megalith under my feat so that a charging Wraithbaned Stalker could remove him from the game without retaliation. For Baldur2 this is a big blow as he simultaneously lost his heaviest hitter and a lot of healing power on himself. From here on the game slowly attritioned out in my favour with me eventually winning by scenario. As a side note I really enjoy double porting Laris forward so that Kaya can channel Muzzle and then using his animus to go back. Rinse and repeat. In this game I killed 3 o 4 Druids, 1 a turn. It was fun.

Final round, myself vs Alasdair Johnstone and his Cryx. He used Denny2 and I used Krueger2 with Process of Elimination as the scenario. I went second and, on turn 2, I cleared the zone on the right hand side of the board whilst destroying the objective and dominating. 3pts in 1 turn is pretty good! The next turn I almost screwed it up by clearing the zone apart from Nightmare and then Feating to push him to the back of the zone followed by Telekinesising him out… only to forget he gets Stealth with Denny. If I’d done it the other way around then I would have won 5-0 with almost no casualties. As it stands, I was lucky and Nightmare didn’t pulp Krueger so I could win by scenario the next round. Almost a disaster but luck pulled me through in the end!

So, after all that, I won the first tournament I played in 2013 which felt pretty good! My lists both worked well but, despite that, I’ve been getting bored of Circle recently… Part of this article is intended to explain what I feel are the current issues with Circle in a competitive environment and why I might start using some of my other Factions in the next Steamroller I take part in.

My main issue currently actually has very little to do with what I feel a lot of other Circle players are worrying about. The common complaint seems to be colossals and them being unable to be moved which stops a lot of our tricks. My main issue is the predilection of Tough spam and Menoth in the competitive scene. A lot of the tricks Circle have for killing infantry and sprinting away are reliant upon destroying enemy models which is stopped by Tough and self-sacrifice on Errants. The second problem we have is Legion. Now that they have access to Vayl2 and Purification I feel like most games that Circle have against Legion are an uphill struggle. The newfound love of Thagrosh1 doesn’t help us either… All this rambling is basically just a way to say that I think Morvahna2 has to be really good to give Circle much of a chance in high level competitive play where Menoth and Legion will be everywhere. On a more personal note, I’ve also found list building with Circle pretty boring for the most part. I love my Krueger2 list but most lists tend to have the same format when I build them (full Stones, Druid Wilder, Gorax, Warpwolf Stalker, another Warpwolf, a Blackclad Wayfarer and fill to taste. I don’t think Circle can skew lists well and I tend to enjoy skew lists. I‘m not entirely sure what Faction I’ll be using next… Probably Menoth. Maybe Skorne.

One more final note, the first World Team Championship will be this October and I will be playing for Team Scotland! Tremble and despair at my rather indecisive Faction decisions! I’m very much looking forward to this event where myself and my fellow team members will be trying our best to be competitive at this event (in the most boozing team award at least). I won’t be giving away any of our team tech here but you may here more musings on the subject before October!

Well my next article, whenever I get around to writing it, will probably be a bit of dojo on the next Faction I’ll be using. Enjoy your games in the meantime!

Cheers,

PurchasedPig

Author: PurchasedPig

Hi there, PurchasedPig here, based in bonnie Scotland in the UK. I'm a relatively recent convert to Warmachine/Hordes from the GW systems (been playing for about a year and a half). I played 40k from aged 11 and sort of kept going with Wargaming from there...
I have a severe case of Faction ADD and collect more factions than not. As a result I feel like I have a lot of information to extol! Hopefully any ramblings are appreciated, give me a shout if you want to know anything else!